Mordheim in Montana

Archive for the 'Mordheim Buildings' Category

I painted most of the inside of the dice tower because I am planning on having a number of holes in the exterior that will allow you to see inside as the dice roll by. I have already cut one of the window holes all the way through. I needed to paint the inside of the tower before I put the roof on, so I went ahead and base painted everything I could.

I didn’t really have a plan as to how many windows I wanted to cut into this building. I have kind of decided that this building was going to be a tavern. It could definitely pass as a tavern, and since most taverns have a back alley/dump section which no windows face, I thought this was a perfect excuse not to make any more windows. =)

To frame the windows, I’m planning on cutting tiny strips of Popsicle sticks, which is going to be a royal pain… So the fewer windows the better.

Next step is the roof. I have decided to permanently glue the roof down. I was toying with the idea of using magnets to secure the roof, so I could remove it to fix anything that might go wrong on the inside of the building. I just have very grand plans for the roof, as I want to to be as playable as possible, and since players will not be allowed to go inside of it, making the roof playable is my only real choice. Now that I think about it though, the dice going through the dice tower make it rumble and shake a lot. So I may have to scratch that idea.

I’ve added the wooden baseboard and three corners around the outside of the building. I have also framed one of the windows. I have used Popsicle sticks for almost all of the wooden sections of this Mordheim Building. I have also used a couple stirring sticks. Some of the thin wood (like 3 sides of the window) was created by cutting a very tiny sliver from a Popsicle stick, and turning it sideways.

Here’s the front door:

Here’s the framed window. I forgot that I will need to remove the grating to add the black base paint behind the grating, so I will just have to do my best on this window to cover all of the white foam bubbles with black paint:

While I was at a Montana-style estate auction (in someone’s backyard) I accidentally bought a bucket of crap for $2.00 when I thought I was only buying a T-square. Instead of throwing away the bucket, I brought it home and searched through it. This bucket was full of the most random construction stuff. It had some weird foam tubing, bolts, tails, etc., etc. It also had probably 100 of these small white vent-type plastic parts about 7 inches long and 3 inches wide. I have no idea what they are for exactly but I knew they could definitely come in handy for my Mordheim Buildings. I just hadn’t figured out what I could use them for… until now!

MORDHEIM WINDOWS!

This picture shows the plastic vent with one edge cut off and sliced into nice window sized pieces, and the other side of the plastic vent left in place. They end up being kind of thick borders, but I think after painting, it will look perfect. Here’s a progress shot I took while cutting a hole for this window. It was really quite simple; I just marked the hole, and cut it out with a razor blade, leaving a small ledge around the edged to keep the window grating from sinking too far into the wall.

My next step will be adding a window frame around the window.
-Ashton Sanders

As promised, here’s a little tutorial of how I used Spackle to cover Styrofoam and packing foam surface.

The Problem: If you have ever made anything out of the Styrofoam that comes packed around store-bought products (or seen it for that matter), you probably have noticed that the surface is definitely not smooth. Since it was made with little, round foam bubbles, the surface has lots of little bumps and gaps. If you are unfamiliar with this surface, you probably won’t need to read this tutorial. Here is a picture of Styrofoam with a base paint of black so you can see the surface:

As you may have noticed, my dice tower (and most of my buildings so far) are constructed mostly of packing foam (Styrofoam). As you can see in this picture, the foam bubbles and small holes in Styrofoam is not really a desired look for model building, so I have gone on a quest to find the best way to hide the Styrofoam texture. Here’s a picture of my Dice Tower Wall after I painted the Styrofoam, and before I filled in the Styrofoam holes:

Click on any of these image for an even larger view.

If you put 3-5 coats of acrylic paint on Styrofoam, it will eventually cover up these holes. Another tactic I’ve used is to spread Elmer’s Glue or PVA Glue (White Glue) over the surface of your building. Or you can mix in the previously mentioned white glue into the paint before painting the Styrofoam or foam. All of these create a very smooth and flat surface on your foam, which is nice but not realistic.

I happened to have a small tub of “light-weight” Spackle hanging out in my closet, so I spread it over the surface of my building. In this next picture you can see how the Spackle automatically filled in the Foam holes, surrounded the Styrofoam bubbles and filled in the cracks. I accidentally painted this building black before putting on the Spackle, but in the end has helped a lot for these pictures.

This next picture shows the thin layer of Spackle I spread on this foam dice tower building. I tried my best to thin out the Spackle and create a nice, smooth surface over the foam. In retrospect, I would definitely recommend a thicker layer of Spackle. The extra Spackle will add more texture to your building and cover the foam better.

As you can see in this final picture, the layer of Spackle is too thin and shows some of the foam bumbles. I’ll be adding another layer of Spackle for texture and to cover the Styrofoam bubbles.

I’ll be putting together a Tutorial for Covering Styrofoam and Foam in the next couple days!

Finally I have found someone in Montana interested in playing Mordheim!

My neighbors came over for dinner yesterday, and they brought their son. He brought over his Pokemon cards, and we “battled” with an extremely simplified, home-made set of rules. I took out one Orc Warrior and a Rat, and faced them in front of each other and told him the basic rules. I explained the game as we went, and told him what he need to roll each time.

To say the least, he fell in love. We did combat mini-games with Mordheim rules (starting 8 inches apart) 5-6 times.

We used my Mordheim Dice Tower the entire night, and since we were just playing on my work bench, it ended up being the most useful thing of the night. We only rarely had to find dropped dice (if we missed the entrance), and we didn’t have to get a huge space to roll. It also doubled as testing for my dice tower. I found one little bug where a dice could get stuck 1 in a 1000 rolls. But hey, at least I know before I’ve added the roof!

So maybe one of these days, I’ll actually play the game of Mordheim =) *knocks on wood*
-Ashton Sanders

The next step in my unorganized shamble of a plan, was to paint all of the ramps black along with the inside of the building. That way I won’t have a lot of trouble painting the inside after I glue it all together. Unfortunately, I mixed up way too much paint (I was mixing water with black to insure the black paint go into the crevices.) So instead of wasting the perfectly good, watered-down black paint, I painted as much as I could, and glued it together all at the same time.

I also glued my now black dice tower to a section of thick card I got from the back of a picture frame. This “base” will act to hold the dice catcher in place, connected to the dice tower. Here’s a picture:

Here’s a close up picture of the Dice Catcher in progress:

Next I will conquer the “Styrofoam Texture” on the side of my Dice Tower!

I’ve run into some trouble with dice “sticking” in the dice tower. This only really occurs when I roll a lot of dice at once (like 7+), and fortunately for me, Mordheim doesn’t usually require that many dice being rolled at a time. Even when that many dice are rolled, it only gets stuck 1-3% of the time. I’ve tried everything I could think of to handle the problem so I’ve accepted that it will happen sometimes. I’m okay with that.

Here’s the pictures of the new tower:

I played a good game of Star Wars Risk using the dice tower, and it didn’t go to favorably for me. I rolled about 20 battles through the dice tower and lost 17 of them. Hopefully it will be happier once I’m done putting it together. =)